Growing Up Fisher by Joely Fisher

Author:Joely Fisher
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2017-10-10T04:00:00+00:00

Maybe This Time

When I returned from Italy, I felt different about the tools I had at my disposal to prepare for a role. I felt like I knew what I was doing. Over the course of a career, there have been two handfuls of female characters with which I have put this work to good use. In 1999, I was given the distinct pleasure of playing one of the most coveted and iconic roles in musical theater—Sally Bowles in Cabaret. Choreographer-director Rob Marshall and director Sam Mendes were at the helm of a Broadway revival. I auditioned for them. After a small slew of Sallys, I was asked to go into the role. In eleven days, I got a crash course in all things Cabaret, from Rob’s right hand (and foot), Cynthia Onrubia, and the assistant director, J. V. Mercanti. Rob Marshall and Sam Mendes came in to fine-tune and nuance my performance before sending me out in the part. They would watch, from time to time, and give me notes: “You’re self-indulgent in this scene, give a little less.”

But the real preparation I did was my dream work. I did the same heart mandala exercise I’d learned in Italy in order to tap into the essence of Sally. In my dream of her, I was out-of-control roller-skating through a crowd in New York City, and when I woke up, I thought: That’s Sally . . . she’s out of control on roller skates in a crowd. So that’s how I started to build the character, from that emotional place.

Once I had learned the part and begun to really embody the character, Rob gave me a big-picture note: “You need to do on-screen what you’re doing onstage every night, because it’s fucking real.”

It’s hard to describe how satisfying it is to find yourself in the perfect role that comes along at just the right time, and then really nail it. Fucking incredible, for starters. But then, the difficulty was in finding a way to do it every night for a year. About three months into the run, I began having trouble. It was such a dark part, and I was so deep inside it. Rob Marshall saw the show and then came back to my dressing room.

I was in pretty rough shape, and I couldn’t hide it anymore. Every night, onstage, I was having the experience of the junkie girl who was lost and roller-skating amid the crowd, who just wanted to be loved, and I felt what she felt, and it was so hard.

“I don’t know what to do, because I don’t know if I can do it again,” I said.

“You’ve done it already, so when you go onstage, you embody that character, so you don’t have to physically have the experience every night like you do,” he said. “You are her. You don’t have to excavate that stuff every time. Relax. It’s going to be fine. It’s funny. I’ve had this conversation with several other Sallys. It happens, always, at the same point—you are her now, so you don’t have to work so hard.

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